About Me

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Yilan, Taiwan
I just returned back to the States after 11 years in Taiwan with my daughter. Taiwan is an excellent base for us explore Asia, while living in relative (gun free) safety, while benefiting from a cheap and efficient national health care system. The people are amazing too. I have Taiwanese friendships that are 20 years old and I'm always making new ones! My coworker here in CO is from Taiwan.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

We Be Jammin' Harvest Moon Marmalade

Pomelo orchard near Jioulio Waterfall
Its Autumn in Yilan and like everyone in Taiwan, we have pomelo fruits coming out of our ears.

 Its the gift that keeps on giving, but I prefer it more than moon cakes, lesser calories and more healthy.

Pomelos (Citrus Maxima) are an ancient grapefruit, but much larger and sweeter than their newer descendants. Its the largest citrus fruit and in Taiwan the flesh is white/pale yellow.

 My work gave each of us a hefty box, with a dozen pomelos for Mid- Autumn festival, plus my building gave each of us several, so not wanting to waste I decided to make marmalade with my daughter.

It was a bit labor intensive to say the least. We had to peel them all and the rind is much thicker and stronger than other citrus fruit. Then we separated the yummy flesh from the inedible skin. Our hands were burning from removing the fruit,we had to rinse them several times. While we did that, I boiled the rind three times with fresh water before slicing thinly and adding to the boiling mixture (I dont have a food processor).

The recipe I found was 4 cups of sugar to 1 pomelo and we used 5 pomelos (I still have quite few left). Feeling uber-creative I decided to add some pomegranate fruits, inspired by the season of Autumn. I thought seeing the seeds suspended in the marmalade would look cool. It just made the final batch orange (pale yellow + blood red = orange).


My daughter removing the sweet flesh from the bitter skin
I had to buy some props for teaching from one of those "everything stores" and felt lucky to find different sized jars. I washed and dried them the night before and used the "water bath canning technique." A few days later, I gladly gave my co-workers a small gift to celebrate the season. It still feels like summer around here though!

The final result, Pomelo and Pomegranate Marmalade



Friday, September 12, 2014

Over the Moon: Mid Autumn Festival Yilan Style



Suao port and beach from Suhua Highway

The one thing to expect on a 3 day weekend in Taiwan are the crowds. That and train tickets will be sold out 2 weeks before they sell at the station (you can buy online with a Taiwanese ID #). So when we had moments of crowd-less nature, I definitely was over the moon with gratitude. It was also the first time in 6 years I was free in my own car to explore Yilan.

The empty Neibi beach, Suao.
Saturday Day 1 of our Moon festival weekend, went as planned. On our way to Nanao, we stopped for coffee at Neibi beach. It was totally desolate. We had the rooftop cafe to ourselves as well as the view of the Pacific. Where were all the crowds? In Kenting no doubt. After coffee and a shared shaved matcha iced tea with red beans we were back in the car.



The woman at the cafe told me in Mandarin that the local Matsu temple was moving the goddess idol to visit a god in Yilan and she explained times and locations. I was pretty giddy to have my comprehension of her explanation proved when we ran into the pilgrims. They had the coolest shirts, a sea of red devotees.

My friend climbing for a jump, Auhua Waterfalls.

After that it was back in the car to Nan'ao and there we found the crowds, bumper to bumper on the notoriously dangerous and most beautiful highway, the Suh-ua Highway. Its danger is not due to the narrow one lane switchbacks that plummet to the Pacific, but because fellow drivers are impatient and pass the corners on blind spots.


Outside a little aboriginal village called Aohua (the 161 km marker) there is the most magnificent waterfall. Three aboriginal teens on one scooter took us there. There were other cars in the lot and we hiked up a 5 minute walk, scrambled some rocks and there it was. There were a few families, but the pool was so enormous, the water dwarfed us so there was room enough for all. My companion bravely scrambled a bit up the wet and slippery rocks to plummet into the sparkling cold abyss.

 

We went home as planned, beat, ready for Sunday and finding a camping spot. Our day 2 definitely did not go as planned, except for the coffee at the revolving cafe on Highway 7. We found a camping spot next to Champing Lake, which was fairly close, like 15 minutes outside of Loudong. There was a lake circumstanced by wooden walkways and the camp spots had wooden platforms and BBQ grills. There was even a go-cart track. Surpisingly, there were few campers, maybe 2 or 3 tents that I could see. And still, greedy for solitude, we kept going further up the 7, farther away from big cities, only to find more crowds and rain. Camping did not happen. 

We did go up the eastern part of the North Cross highway to check out the Mingchi Forest Recreation area. It was disappointing. The lake was over-developed and charged an entrance fee. The Forest area itself has a massive resort  (明池國家森林遊樂區) on it with cabins and a restaurant that was of course crowded. The North Cross Highway which is high in altitude has some nice views and dark, misty, dank forests. There were moments we drove in clouds and we definitely got caught in the rain on the way back. We took a walk behind the cabins and found a few trails, but there were no camping spots there. Who knows we might com back on a non-holiday weekend and stay in one of the cabins.



Day 3 of our Moon Festival weekend, on Monday, we took our time heading out to one more nearby waterfall. Around the corner from Xingliao Waterfall is the abandoned Jiuliou Waterfall, about a 20 minute drive from my home. The trail was not very well maintained, but there wasn't another person there. We had the whole overgrown trail and small waterfall to ourselves. The overgrown parking lot is a perfect camping spot, no bathrooms, wooden platforms or vending machines. The path from the parking lot to the trail has a pomelo orchard on it. Pomelo is the fruit of the mid-Autumn festival.





We will hopefully return to those falls to camp next weekend.

Turtle Island from the Suao/Suhua Highway overlook



Pili Party!


Great news in today's paper this morning (for once), Pili Puppets will start airing free shows with English subtitles for free on YouTube (article is here). They usually air on our channel  8 at 9 pm which is past my kid's bedtime, but on Fridays, she stays up late and will translate the Taiwanese for me (she reads the Mandarin subtitles as her Taiwanese is just ok.)

I wrote a blog about the Pili display at the airport in 2012.

Just the other day I told my 7th graders about how I like Pili and they were shocked. "But teacher, that show is for old grandfathers!" As if Pili isn't cool. I guarantee the fighting scenes, special effects and attention to detail will blow you away!